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I went back to the kitchen and poured the coffee for both of us. I'd seen him spoon sugar into his, so I guessed at the amount and brought his cup to him in the bathroom.

"Hey, thanks!" he said, sounding genuinely grateful. "Nice to get service around here." He scrubbed the last of the water out of his tightly trimmed chin fur and picked up his coffee to take a cautious sip. He raised one eyebrow in surprise. "You even got the sugar right. Good job!" I couldn't help smiling at his praise, but when I saw that he'd hooked a claw under his towel and was pulling it off, I quickly ducked back out, cursing myself for my prudish ways. I'd fantasized over seeing him naked for years, and now that I had the chance, I ran away from it. Damn it!

I waited in the kitchen for him to get dressed and come out of his bedroom. I could smell bacon, but there was nothing on the stovetop but a greased griddle. I looked in the oven and saw bacon slow cooking on a cookie sheet. "Damn, I never thought to do it that way," I said to myself, filing the technique away for future reference. I'm a fiend for bacon, but I hate the mess. There you go.

Bubba walked into the kitchen wearing shorts and a loose shirt, turned on the gas under the griddle, and pulled a small pitcher of batter out of the refrigerator. "When did you have time to make that?" I asked, curious.

"Doesn't take all that long to make," he said. "just a minute or two, but nobody seems to do it anymore. Food companies tell you it's easier to make 'em out of a box, but that's bullshit. Funny thing is, folks believe them. They're willing to pay twice as much to eat crap because it takes sixty seconds less to make it. Hardly seems worth it, to me." He poured the batter onto the sizzling grill, and spent the next few minutes alternately flipping and pouring until a nice sized stack of pancakes sat on the plate next to the stove.

"One of these days, you'll make someone a lovely wife." I joked as he turned off the gas. He shot me his patented "fuck off" look, but then said "I guess nobody told you I used to be a short order cook in a truckstop before Dad died. I'd always thought one of my other brothers would take over the dairy, but none of them were interested. So fifteen years later, here I am."

While setting the breakfast table, I looked outside and saw that the snow was coming down harder now. There wasn't much wind, so it just sort of floated straight down in the most peaceful way imaginable. "I hope you've got plenty more where this came from." I said of the food, "It looks like we might even get snowed in."

Bubba piled half the flapjacks onto his plate and slathered them with butter from a porcelain crock. I was fascinated with watching him eat. Everything he did was straight out of the macho textbook, if there was such a thing. He held his fork in his fist with the tines pointed down, and stabbed at his food without consideration or delicacy. He chewed big bites and didn't bother using his knife for anything but spreading butter. He was one hundred percent guy, and I loved watching him. I'd never heard anyone say that I was obviously gay in my mannerisms, but compared to Bubba I was a flaming fruit. Shit, compared to Bubba, John Wayne was a flaming fruit.

I found myself trying to do things the way he did them. At first I felt guilty about doing that, like I was trying to be someone I wasn't. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that from the time we're little children, our actions are programmed by the people we're around who we respect and want to be like. I was just doing it thirty years later in life than most of the other kids.

"Did this come from your cows?" I asked, spreading impossibly smooth chunks of butter between my pancakes, trying to hold my knife like Bubba did.

"Yep," he said proudly. "I haven't shown you the churn yet." He poured syrup from a glass jar onto his plate, making a moat around the pancake castle. "The buttermilk in the pancakes came from them, too. And, obviously, the milk in your glass." He cut a triangular chunk off the stack of pancakes and shoved it into his mouth, groaning softly in pleasure. "Actually, this all came from Gertie. I think she's always late because she enjoys the personal attention. I don't get to worked up about it because she makes the best milk anyway, and I like the thought of getting all my milk from a single cow." He cut a fat sausage patty into thirds with the edge of his fork and stuffed a piece into his mouth. Talking around his food in a way that somehow managed to not be offensive, he said , "This sausage comes from Dan Weber down the road. We trade milk for hog products. Best damned sausage in the county."

I had to admit, the food was all the best I'd ever eaten. The butter was sweet and creamy, and like nothing else I'd ever tasted before. What I'd bought in the stores was nothing like this, and didn't deserve to be called 'butter'. The pancakes were light and fluffy, and it was patently obvious that Bubba made them all the time. I was no stranger to the kitchen, but these eclipsed mine by a considerable margin.

We talked and ate and drank coffee until it was all gone, and laid out the framework to a decent friendship that first morning. After breakfast we cleaned the dishes and moved into the living room, where we could watch the thick but gently falling snow blanket the farm through the large windows on the west side of the house. "Work never stops on a dairy," he explained, "but for a few days I'll take it easy on ya, especially since it's snowing. I got most of the maintenance out of the way before you got here, so we get a free day or two."

Country music played softly on the radio, making a nice background noise to fill short voids in our conversation. We pretty much spent the day like that, just getting to know each other better and enjoying each other's company. We ate when we got hungry, and drank a huge amount of coffee between us. Somewhere in all that talking, I realized that I didn't just like Bubba because he was family, and I wasn't attracted to him simply because he was hotter than hell. I started to like him as a person, and that realization made it a hell of a lot easier to be around him without being nervous. I found my shields going down, and had to fight to keep them up. I had absolutely no desire for him to find out I was gay before he got to know me as a man. That, I'd discovered, was the fastest way to chase off good people, and there was no way I was going to chase Bubba off.

Somewhere around sunset we switched from coffee to beer. As it turned out, Bubba hated light beer as much as I did, and in the garage refrigerator he'd laid in a good stock of different beers from around the globe. "Not much to do out here in the winter but tend cows and drink beer," he said, twisting the cap off a dark ale.

"So why don't you have a TV set?" I asked, giving rein to my curiosity.

Bubba waved a big hand dismissively. "Rots your brain." He said, then as if it were too simple an answer, he elaborated. "I used to have a TV set and a fancy satellite dish to go with it, and one day I realized I was looking at shit I wouldn't be caught dead watching. I think the breaking point was when I realized I was watching a rerun of Judge Judy. There were chores to be done, and I was sitting on my fat ass watching something I'd already seen, and not even liked very much the first time I watched it. So I cancelled my service and gave the TV to the church."

'The church?' This was new information, and my curiosity spiked. I'd pretty much figured Bubba wouldn't have much interest in religious matters after all the drinking we did the night before. But then again, I was a believer too, and I'd drank almost as much as anyone else had. "You go to church around here?"

"Yep, every Sunday at New Hope, about ten miles up the road." Any thoughts I might have harbored about getting it on with my hunky cousin evaporated like a drop of water on a hot cast-iron skillet.

"What time do we get up?" I asked.

"I leave here at about eight," he said, "but you don't have to go if you don't want to."

"I'd like to," I said. I'd been active in my church back home, but that was a modern church that was accepting of my gay lifestyle. I figured that God was God, whether the church you worshipped in was in the middle of the city or way out in the boondocks. He didn't care I was gay in the city, and he wouldn't care way out here. But out here, I didn't figure I'd be giving any of the other guys a big hug on the way into the sanctuary.

That opened up a whole new realm of conversation, and we talked for another couple of hours about our positions on various theological issues of the day. I was astonished to find that even though he'd grown up in the country, Bubba managed to escape the small town mentality on many of my pet issues. I was careful to steer the conversation away from homosexuality, and he didn't seem inclined to bring it up. One day, maybe someday soon, but not today.

My country cousin had an upbringing about as different from my own as night from day. Their family farm had always just struggled along on the edge of bankruptcy, and when his father made the decision to switch over to ranching organic milk, it was ten years ahead of its time. Only some swift and savvy marketing moves by his mother had kept them out of the poorhouse. I remembered her as being a thin and earthy looking woman, with grey fur and kind eyes. This apparently gave her some cachet among the organic foods buyers, and that kept enough money coming in to sustain the farm until the rest of the population caught onto the health craze.

Something wasn't quite adding up, and the beer had loosened my tongue enough to ask Bubba an embarrassingly personal question. "Dad told me the reason you needed help out here was that you were having a tough time making ends meet." For some reason it didn't sound as bad when I was saying it as it did once it was out of my mouth.

I could feel my ears turning red under Bubba's gaze, but he didn't look mad. Instead, to my surprise, he looked amused. "What, are you kidding? For the first time, the farm's actually paying off. Where did you hear I wasn't making it?"

"I think Dad got it from Uncle Ernie."

Bubba laughed and took a long swig from his bottle. "Well, that explains it. Uncle Ernie never did get anything right the first time. Hell, he's been married - what, four times? Still hasn't gotten that right, either. His new wife's a bitch." He gave a far-off look into the distance. "Should have stuck with number two. Stella was nice." He was right - Stella was the only one of Ernie's wives that anyone in the family could stand for more than five minutes. And now that I thought about it, she'd been pretty, too.

Bubba continued. "What I told him was that I needed some help out here because I couldn't do it all by myself." He waved a hand to indicate the falling snow. "This ain't the way it is most of the time. If you weren't here, I'd be outside worming the cows or running the fence line. It's a lot for one man to do by himself." He paused as a thought came to him. "Is that why you're out here? To help me out of a jam?"

I shrugged helplessly. "Pretty much, yeah."

Bubba rolled over on the couch laughing, reminding me of nothing more than a big mean dog that was rolling over to have his belly scratched. I resisted the urge and explained, "When Dad heard you were having problems, he told me about it. I was between jobs and had nothing better to do, so I came out here."

"Does that mean you'll work for cheap?" he asked, rubbing water out of the corners of his eyes. "We never did discuss payment. "I was going to pay a ranch hand a decent wage, but if you'll work for free..."

"Hell, I wasn't expecting to get paid, but if you're going to shell out for someone, it might as well be me," I said, indignantly.

"Okay, okay," he conceded, "ranch hand wages, it is. But don't expect too much, because you get free room and board with that."

I leaned over and held out my beer bottle, and he clinked the bottom of his against mine. "Deal."

Sunday was a revelation on a number of fronts. The church I went to back in the city was large, even by urban standards. On any given Sunday, we might have a thousand people show up at any of the three services. The membership rolls showed over six thousand on the books, so we typically had fifty percent attendance. At the New Hope Church, things were quite a bit different. They had an active membership of 60, and I shook the hand of all 54 members who showed up that day. I could have met all sixty, but the Johnson family had to be out of town in Yazoo city to see their daughter graduate from college.

That weekend the pastor spoke of fire and damnation, but he also spoke eloquently of forgiveness and the love of a mighty savior. The congregation hung on his every word, and his sermon deserved their attention.

At one point in the pastor's message I heard the man sitting next to me catch his breath, and was astonished to see a single tear running down Bubba's cheek. I was used to crying in church. Hell, I did it all the time. There's something about a good sermon that occasionally turns on the waterworks in me. But I never expected to see it in someone like Bubba, who had his shit so completely together. I'd seen a box of tissues in the pew behind me, thoughtfully provided for just such an occasion. I pulled the box between us and removed one to clean my glasses, careful not to embarrass my cousin by offering him one. But he couldn't have cared less. He pulled out a tissue and blew his nose with gusto, not caring who saw him or that his image might be ruined. 'Oh, yeah, ' I thought to myself when I finally made the connection, 'these people don't care about appearances like the guys who go to my church back home.' The thought refreshed me.

Their congregation might have been small, but they had a powerful voice. Anyone passing the church would have been surprised to find that the enthusiastic music was being produced by so few singers. The congregation hit their stride in the final verse of Amazing Grace, and their three part harmony made the rafters shake. Bubba poked me in the ribs and gave me a knowing look as he belted out the final words. I've been complimented on my voice before, but it stood in terror of Bubba's powerful alto. He didn't have a great range, but his singing had confidence. Familiarity of the material can do a lot to shore up a voice, and he was nothing if not confident. Through all five hymns, I never saw him crack open the hymnal. For some reason I can't begin to explain, I felt an enormous pride in him that morning. Here was a man in balance. Masculine yet mindful of others, full of church spirit yet also fun to be around. Intelligent, but unassuming. That morning I resolved to remake my life to be more like Bubba's, not to please him, but to take a stab at finally pleasing myself.

Lunch was at Debbie's Diner in town, and it seemed that half the congregation was there. We sat at a long table with eight other church members, and they treated me like family. Old ladies asked formally after the health of my mother, and after satisfying that social requirement they asked whom I was seeing. Upon hearing that I was unattached, they all got similarly predatory gleams in their eyes. I was, officially, fresh meat. "Don't worry about it," said Bubba, who was sawing through a man-sized steak and eggs platter. "They've been trying to set me up with their granddaughters for years."

"Ever go out with any of them?" I asked, full of morbid curiosity.

"Only one," he said in a low tone of voice," Elma Chevers. Worst mistake of my life." At my look of curious encouragement, he said only, "Eat your lunch."

A week before Christmas I woke up shivering in the middle of the night to the sounds of Bubba banging around in the heater closet. He kept saying over and over, "Shit, shit, shit." I looked out my bedroom window, and saw that the snow which had been falling on and off for two days was on again. White drifts were beginning to pile up against the side of the barn, and frost was forming on the inside corners of the window panes.

"What's going on, cuz?" I asked, my breath fogging the air in front of my face.

"The thermostat's gone out on the heater," he said, "the pilot light won't stay lit."

"Aaw, shit." I said, burrowing under the covers.

"I bought an extra one last winter," he said, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them, "but I can't remember where the hell I put it." He looked miserable. "It's going to get colder than a witches tit in here tonight."

Just looking at him, I could tell he was debating what to do. Finally, he walked back into the garage and brought in a small electric space heater. He plugged it into the socket in my room and turned it on high then went back out, returning a moment later with a blanket and a pillow. He closed the door to my room and lay down on the floor, his bulk making a mountainous lump underneath the blanket.

"Get up here, you idiot," I said. "This bed is huge, and you're going to freeze to death if you try sleeping on the floor." It was true - the house was old, with wooden floors and pier and beam construction that had little insulation in the flooring. There were spots in the house where you could feel drafts easing up between the floorboards like ghosts coming through the walls.

"I'm fine." Bubba said shortly, cutting off the conversation. I mentally shrugged my shoulders, accepting his decision at face value.

Ten minutes later, I woke up to the bed creaking underneath me, a large weight compressing the springs on the far side of the mattress. A heavy comforter fell across my side of the bed as he spread it over both of us. Bubba had given in, and was laying on top of my bed with nothing but his comforter between him and the cold. By this time, I was tired of his macho posturing. "Get under the covers, you fucking retard!"

I heard a bit of grumbling, then a cold draft of air as the sheets were parted. A very cold man joined me in the bed, and I had to chuckle a bit. I was in bed with my hunky cousin, but it was hardly the circumstance I'd imagined. It was like sleeping with a hot man and a cold shower all at once, but I didn't care. I was still closer to him that I'd ever really thought I'd be, and that was enough for me. He was a good man, and had been a good friend to me, and I wouldn't do anything stupid that might upset that.